


A Lead Role In A Cage

by nihilBliss



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Universe - No Game, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Aphrodisiacs, Bathing/Washing, Bipolar Sollux Captor, Blood and Violence, Body Dysphoria, Bondage, Breeding, Bugs & Insects, Bulges and Nooks (Homestuck), Canon-Typical Violence, Coercion, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Depression, Desperation, Drugged Sex, Dubious Consent, Fuck Or Die, Gangbang, Guilt, Hallucinations, Hemospectrum, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Impregnation, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Mental Coercion, Mind Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Multi, Other, POV Second Person, Phonetic Lisp, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Presumed Dead, Sadstuck, Self-Hatred, Sollux Captor with a Lisp, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 00:27:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20055043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilBliss/pseuds/nihilBliss
Summary: Karkat Vantas has spent the whole of his life walking the long mile to a foregone conclusion. Because of the color of his blood, he will one day be culled for the good of the empire. He’s made it to the last two wipes before his Ordeals, his tenth wiggling day, when a stranger rings his doorbell. He learns that his body is capable of giving birth to a grub without the help of a mother grub. And so he is given a choice: make a grub for an eccentric highblood and escape Alternia, or die.But Karkat will learn that nothing is simple when there’s a legacy on the line. He finds himself in a world of silent coercion and a web of conflicts beyond his sight. To survive, he has to answer a question: who’s pulling the strings?





	1. Hanging On In Quiet Desperation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ang3lba3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/gifts).

It's not funny, watching two young lowbloods scrambling for cover as the acidic rain burns their skin. But a morbid, involuntary chuckle escapes you anyway as you watch them from the comfort of your hive. Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you’ve spent quite a few nights staring out of the uppermost window of your hive these past few sweeps. Those kids were standing across the street a minute ago, no doubt gossiping about how your house was haunted as your neighbors so often did these days. Bunch of chattering fuckbuggies; you have another two wipes before your Ordeals and inevitable execution. The least they could do is wait until you're dead before treating you like a ghost.

The long-haired kid with the conical horns below is clawing at their no-doubt burning eyes as caustic rain runs down their face. Poor fucker. They're probably blind already. You wish you could do something. You really ought to open your door and let them in. But you don’t. And if anyone asked why, you’re not sure you’d have an answer.

Maybe it's better that you know your exact expiration date. You can't imagine how awful it must be to be confronted with death out of nowhere like everyone else. That's what happened most of your Trollian chums. A few of them made it off planet, you’re pretty sure, but you know most of them didn’t. Couldn’t have. Whichever. Either way, they mostly died or left without finding out you were a freak, which is for the best. You know some of them would have put their posture poles on the line to get you off-planet before your Ordeals and inevitably gotten themselves culled in the attempt. 

Sollux was the only one who knew, the only friend you ever actually saw face to face. He put himself on the line the moment he found out, making you that widget that turns back the bucket drones. But that’s not why he got blown to bits last sweep. If it was, you would be dead too. At least, that’s what you have to believe. You’ve got enough on your shoulders without that guilt, thank you very fucking much.

You slap yourself; thinking about the people you used to know brings nothing but pain. So does calling them friends. If they knew you, saw the color of your blood, they’d have done what any right-thinking troll would do and put you out of your misery rather than leave you in this pitiful state. To distract yourself, you do what you always do: you watch.

Below, the long-haired troll is crawling in the middle of the street, and you’ve lost track of their friend… no, no, there they are. Bronze blood drips down their tuning-fork horns, smoking as it burns. Looks like they found the spikes atop your neighbor’s fence, chest first. They're struggling still, but they're not getting away without help, so it's a matter of whether the shock or the blood loss gets them first. Not a good way to go, impalement. Still better than acid burns. 

The long-haired troll is about to crawl into the caustic rivers that fill the gutters. You want to turn away, but watching a troll dissolve hands-first by the side of the road beats being alone with your thoughts right now.

A black scuttlebuggy speeds down the road and averts that fate, fender sending the troll flying through the air with a sickening thud as it squeals a too-tight U-turn and comes to a stop by the curb. Directly below your hive.

Great.

You see a troll in a safety jacket emerge. They stride toward your door, and then comes the ringing of your bell. You decide to ignore them. Whatever they want can wait half a sweep and be taken up with whatever is left of your carcass when the drones or whoever are done with you.

Then comes the sound of an administrative override on your door, and it seems like you aren’t going to be putting this off.

“Fucking highbloods,” you swear. At least in death you won’t have to give a shit about stuck-up pricks whose blood lets them walk over whoever they want. You pick up your training sickle and walk over to the door. Might as well put up a token resistance.

“Fuck off!” you holler down the stairs. Purrbeast-and-squeakbeast bullshit is not something you’ve ever had time for, especially not when you’re, you know, a few wipes from definitely dying.

“Karkat Vantas?” asks the voice.

“Are your vibration tubes clogged? I said fuck off!” you shout down the stairs.

“Sure, if you feel like getting culled,” the voice says. It’s low, gravelly, but thinner. A female troll? Eh, not like it matters.

“If you’re here to cull me, come upstairs and see what a trainee threshecutioner can do to your digestion chute. Otherwise, might I reiterate, fuck off!” You’re getting tired of shouting. You hope they either take your advice or hurry up and kill you.

“The threshecutioners wouldn’t let a mutantblood train with them, much less join their ranks,” the voice says. “Come downstairs and let’s talk face-to-face.”

You feel something sink like a rock in your guts. If someone knows about your blood but hasn’t called the drones to cull you, they want something. For a second, you kind of wish there were a way to make damn sure you really were going to die in two wipes and no sooner. But for now, you figure you might as well see what’s up.

“You’re a fucking awful houseguest,” you shout, walking down the stairs. “I hope my lusus shits you out somewhere I don’t have to deal with your stink.”

“Your lusus has been dead since you were seven sweeps old, Vantas,” the voice calls. “Quit screwing around.” 

Fuck. How do they know so much about you? You should be more scared, you think, but the depression and certainty of death have numbed your survival instincts a little. Score however-the-hell-many for the fuckup mutantblood or something. You clutch the pointless point tight to your pump biscuit as you round the corner into your recreationblock.

“Listen, lususfucker, if you’re just going to intrude on my personal life and sling the tragic facts of my pathetic existence at me, why didn’t you just start with my masturbation fantasies and work from there?”

The stranger, blue as the sea, sits slim and surly opposite your TV. Her safety coat, cast aside carelessly, sits on the rug your frien... acquaintance, Kanaya, sent you as a gift. Acid residue has eaten through it already and is now etching your floor, and you can't help the tightness in your thorax.

"That didn't even make sense," she says, fixing the lapel of her black suit. "Might I suggest you cut the shit and sit down? I'm here to talk."

You tear your eyes away from what’s left of your rug and flop down onto your couch, expression sour as you can manage, arms crossed. You’re acting like a bratty kid and you know it, but who the fuck cares? It’s not like you’re up for a posthumous award for your endless dignity and composure.

“Talk,” you spit. The blueblood adjusts her aviator lenses and smirks at you. You think of Vriska for a moment, and you hope this slick douche is less of a pill.

“My name is Kiefer Maakos. I am here on behalf of my employer, miss Miskin Natrop. She has asked me to have a conversation with you, which we both hope will end with you accepting a business proposal," she says. Hopes dashed; she’s her own flavor of insufferable.

“I swear on my lusus’ half-devoured remains, I will barf every scrap of food in my acid sac onto your ugly fucking suit if you do not get to whatever your stupid point is,” you say. This seems to have some effect, as she edges away from you down the couch.

“Fine,” she says. “My employer has a job that only you can do. As payment, she’ll get you off-planet before you’re up for your Ordeals.”

The world goes vague and fuzzy. You hear a loud ringing. Have you just been struck in the pan with an arena stickball club? Most of the details get lost; something about a support crew and a satellite and a smuggling hatch, but the point is, she’s offering you an out.

“So all we need from you is your body,” she finishes.

“Wait, what?”

She adjusts her glasses, frustrated.

“You’re a mutant. A freak. An evolutionary throwback to before we refined how our species breeds with the help of the mother grub. And my employer wants a descendent she can train in this life. She doesn’t want to leave a fucking puzzle and hope the right person will figure it out,” she says. She looks off into the middle distance like some sort of self-important jackass. “My employer wants a legacy that lasts beyond her lifetime.”

“When you’re done with your fucking reverie, could you act like you think I’m a bigger idiot than you’re treating me and tell me exactly what the nook-kicking hell your boss wants?” you say. She looks at you, somehow even more unamused.

“You can carry live young,” she says, tone flat. “She wants to put her bulge into your nook and fill it with her genetic material so your body makes a grub that looks like her.”

Complying with your wishes, she’s currently stuffing two fingers into a loose fist, just in case you don’t know how your own parts work.

“Cute,” you say. “You’re missing the genetic material, though. Or have you already raided my fridge for grubsauce to assist in your schoolfeed demonstration? Going to dump my condiments all over everything to make your fucking point? There’s a lot of room to improve, is all I’m saying.”

This troll slicks her short hair back and drops into an impassive facade. Not everyone can appreciate your sense of humor, you guess. If nothing else, it’s helping you ignore the core concept of her pitch, which would be a lot to take in if you weren’t doing everything in your power to not do that.

“I’m not getting paid to entertain your tantrum, Vantas,” she says, voice robotically flat. She lowers her glasses and stares into the back of your pan with pupil-less eyes. “You use your freak body to make a grub for my employer, or you die in two wipes. Up to you.”

A chill creeps across your pan and clutches it like icy fingers. You try to say something, but all that comes out is air. Your throatparts won’t move. Your mouth won’t move. You try to make a rude gesture, but your muscles are locked down. All you can do is blink and look at her in panic as a smile flickers across her face.

So, left with no other option, you think. You think about death and dying. About all the things you told yourself when you had to face the fact that you were never going to be a threshecutioner. About everything you read online about what people do when they know they’re going to be culled in the blink before it all got painted over with the official imperial stance of “hurry up and get out of the way.” Your bitter conclusion that it was ultimately the right thing for the empire. The sweep and a half you spent trying to talk yourself into taking that initiative. All the times you flinched before finally saying “fuck it” and putting that burden on the people whose job it was to dispose of trash like you. How you’d hoped your corpse might cause some harm to the people responsible for disposing of you so that all the spite in your little body might leave some mark to prove you were there.

And then, you think about the alternative. About how you felt seeing that cullbait red of your grubscars on the rare and dreaded occasions you had to take your clothes off. How you wore layer upon layer of clothing to bury it as much as possible, even when the heat made your head pound and swim. How you let your body grow filthy and even more revolting because you couldn’t tend to it right with your eyes pinched shut. How your lonely heats forced you to look at that disgusting red… thing between your legs, and all the hours you grit your teeth and tried not to succumb to that screaming need, and all the hours you spent retching and crying after you buckled and serviced yourself before succumbing again. In every way, the prospect of seeing your body bare made you want to be culled so you didn’t have to deal with it.

And then you think of Sollux, the one time you got to see your… just acquaintance, that’s it, you swear to yourself… face to face. Things got… well, they went the way they did with young trolls. Arguing over a movie escalated, and before you knew it, his lips were against yours. You begged him to leave your sweater on, but he felt the layers beneath, asked why you were so heavily dressed on such a hot night. Everything sort of spilled out from there. Tears streaked your face when he looked at you with what you told yourself was disgust despite the tears and the smile and that something you didn’t have a word for that made you want to stay there forever. You’ve spent every night since telling yourself he thought your body was disgusting, that he was wallowing in one of his filthy, degrading fetishes when he moved in you, when you felt something that wasn’t revulsion moving in you too. And then, you remember the moment when whatever strange, probably psionic bullshit was happening to your body wore off, and you made the mistake of looking down to see red and yellow side-by-side. How you shoved him off of you and scrambled to your ablution trap to put fucking anything over your wretched carcass. The angry way you told Sollux to fuck off and never come back when he banged on your door asking if you were okay. You didn’t leave the floor of your ablution trap for days, until your digestion sac clawed at your insides so bad you knew you were going to die if you didn’t do something.

“Vantas!”

The blueblood barks your name, dragging you back to the present. You realize you’ve been crying, and you wipe your tears away on the back of your sleeve. She’s got her sunglasses on again.

“Fuck you,” you manage, your voice still a little too shaky. “Fuck you, and fuck your stupid fucking boss, and fuck your offer. Let me fucking die in peace.”

You sob the last word, and you crumple, hiding your face as hideous red tears stream into your sweater. But you aren’t allowed to wallow for long, as your body locks stiff. Hands push you upright and pile your palms on your lap. She’s taken her glasses off again and is staring at you blank-eyed as she sees to your posture, making you look composed as your air sacs heave and tears stream down your face. 

“You don’t want to make my job easier? Fine,” she says. “We know for a fact that you’re going to spend one of the next two wipes in heat. We know also that your heats are intense. And we know what it does to you when you don’t quench it. Do you really want to spend half of the rest of your life like that? Think about it.”

She holds you tight for a minute to make you think, but hate burns within you. When she lets you go, your legs launch you at her, and you reach for her throat. It shouldn’t be a surprise when you freeze again and land awkwardly on the far end of the couch, face in the cushions. She snarls and cracks her knuckles, seething.

"You are very, very lucky my boss instructed me to deliver you unharmed and willing," she says. "I want to put you in a sack and let you thump around my trunk so bad that my bulge is wet."

You hear a clamor and the sound of breaking chitin and glass. Then comes slow, calming breathing. And then you can move.

Her fist drips blood from the cuts your television left when she punched a hole through it, but she pays her wounds no mind, letting it drip onto your floor. You haven't turned your TV on since you sold your film collection a sweep ago, but rage flares up in you all the same.

"You goddamn nook lice waited until I was about to go into heat before coming to me, didn't you!” you scream. "You wanted me to be desperate so I'd say yes!"

She grins like a cholerbear trap, and for the first time in a long time, you feel fear. Her sharp teeth jut irregularly from her gums, in uneven rows, more than her jaw should be able to fit. You picture what they would do to a piece of meat and shiver.

“Why play a game you’re not going to win?" she asks, nudging her glasses down. "I doubt very much you’d have lived this long if you hadn’t taken every advantage you could."

Now you see her, really see her, for the first time. She's not here to say please. If you say no, you're going to spend the rest of your life afraid she'll do what she is very clearly showing you she wants to do. She'll leave, but she'll come back. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, or maybe she'll wait until your heat is dying down and your misery is at its zenith, but whenever it is, she'll come back. She won't have those sunglasses then. Those big, blank, dead eyes will freeze you in place, and then, she'll eat you alive. You imagine, against your will, how those teeth will tear your flesh apart, how ragged every wound she leaves will be. Whatever consequences she faces for coming back empty-handed, she'll take out on you. Frozen in place, you will be helpless, dying in perhaps the most horrible way you've ever imagined.

She pushes her sunglasses back up over her eyes, and you fold, shivering. You're crying again, but this time, it's silent. She's pulling some bullshit blueblood mind powers like Vriska used to. You know that. But your thinking parts can't tamp down your feeling glands the way you wish they could. Her paralytic chill, though gone, has left you shivering and pitiful. Getting vaporized or blown up, you've braced yourself against for sweeps. But this? Her? Death just got scary again. And you hate that something can still make you feel this way.

"So let's try this again," she says, flat. "You're coming with me of your own free will, right?"

You look at her with all the bile you can muster, tears streaming down your puffy face.

“Fine,” you spit. The word tastes bitter as it comes up.

“I’m sorry? Didn’t quite hear you,” she says, snide.

“I’ll do it!”

You vomit the words into the air. Everything about them makes you feel sick. All the hours and nights and wipes and sweeps you spent coming to terms with your death - preparing for your death - and now you chicken out. You thought you had a scrap of integrity, but this officious asshole has just shown you that it’s bullshit. You’re bullshit - a castle made of bullshit, a monument of bullshit, a fucking empire of bullshit, all washed away in five minutes by a douchey blueblood. You’re a coward; the only honor you had was in death. But now you’re crawling, and you wish she’d just fucking eat you alive, because you’re not sure that would be worse than the sensation of the last inch of you, the inch you spent sweeps shoring up, drifting away like dust in a slight breeze.

Now, you truly feel as worthless as the empire has always tried to make you feel. 

She takes your hand and drags you to your door, flicking the safety coat over you both for the nominal distance between the door of your hive and her buggy. As she stuffs you into the backseat, you make the mistake of glancing out into the burning rain. Down the way, you see that long-haired troll curled up against the wall of someone else’s hive, under an awning. They're shivering, bleeding bronze, but unmistakably alive. And in that last moment, before the door slams shut, you wish with all your pump biscuit that you could switch places.


	2. Welcome To The Machine

When Kiefer opens the door, you’re underground in a parking structure. You don’t get out of your hive much, owing to your cullability, but you’ve seen them in movies before. It smells of hydrazine and strange chemical heat. She grabs the collar of your sweater and drags you out of the buggy, slinging you over her shoulder as though you were a particularly uncooperative sack of nutrition tubers. This would be a great position to vomit down the back of her suit if you could make your digestion sack regurgitate its contents on command, you think.

“So here’s what’s going to happen,” she says. “I don’t give a fuck how you feel about this. Nobody else does either, not really. You agreed to this. Boss thinks you’re less likely to do something stupid to her grub if you're okay with it being inside of you. So you shut up and you do what you’re told when you meet her, understood?”

“Fuck you.”

“That’ll have to do,” she says, dropping you on your feet. She’s got a hand under your armpit to hold you up and is all but dragging you forward. You stumble but eventually get your feet under you, matching her rapid pace. Clumsily, you jog along as best you can.

She drags you down a hallway that stretches as far as you can see, brightly lit and cleaner than anything you’ve seen outside of Alternian cinema. You feel like you should be doing something besides being dragged along, but the pain in your arm and the briskness of the jog rules out any kind of conversation.

Suddenly, at a point in the tunnel that seems arbitrary to you, She stops. She turns and gropes vaguely at the wall until her claws find purchase on something. Whatever she’s got, she slides open, revealing a hole. She stuffs her hand into it, and you hear the beeping of a computer before a section of wall slides open. Again, she grabs you, dragging you down the new passage.

It’s about a hundred feet before the ceiling and walls drop away, and you’re on a long, exposed bridge. At the end looms a massive rocket, the kind that takes near-adult trolls off-planet every few days. For as wretched as you feel, you never imagined that you’d get this close to one. You’re not sure how to process that, so you settle for ‘vaguely overwhelmed’ and let it distract from the mess in your head.

“Here she comes,” the blueblood says, straightening up and crossing her arms behind her back. "Miskin Natrop herself."

At the end of the bridge, a door opens, and an entourage of trolls emerges. Purplebloods, you assume - clowns like Gamzee - but that’s not quite it. They’re in uniforms marking them as an imperial guard contingency, not any subjugglator order you’ve ever heard of. And they're wearing all sorts of colors.

As they get closer, you realize they’re not part of Gamzee’s stupid clown cult. They’re in masks - flat, white, featureless, with black circles for eyes. One, at the center of the group, stands much taller than the rest, and her mask has no black spots. Rather, piercing violet eyes shine through a pair of holes. The gills on her neck flick, and you surmise that this must be Miskin. Your benefactor, you think, the word foul in your mouth.

“Kiefer Maakos,” the violetblood says in a voice that echoes in your bones.

“Yes, miss Natrop,” says the blueblood. “I’ve acquired the package, unharmed as requested.”

“He is not a package, Kiefer,” she says. “He is our guest.”

Guest? What a load of shit. You snort your objection, and you feel their attention shift to you.

“Do you have something to say, Karkat Vantas? You are, so to speak, the troll of the hour,” Miskin says, voice coming from what feels like a spot directly between your ears.

“Come with you or stay and die isn’t much of a choice,” you spit. You feel your momentum building. “Especially not when you send the reigning empress of intimidating stare-downs with the invitation. ‘Oh, hello Mr. Vantas, come to this party where I’m going to pail you while wearing a spooky fucking mask and make your freak body do something troll bodies aren’t supposed to be able to do anymore! Let’s get you back for all those times the drones didn’t vaporize you for failing to fill a quadrant much less a bucket and give you the very immediate choice to fuck or die.’ Wow! I really feel like a VIT here. Fuck, I’m surprised you didn’t greet me with bottles of Faygo spurting off in an arc to welcome me into my new life as your personal mock mother grub. You’re such a great host I could drop my trousers right here, right now, and let you go to town on my nook where all these assholes can watch me give it up, just as soon as I’m done taking a shit off the side of this bridge to symbolically express all the optimism I have for my future. Thanks!”

Silence reigns. You wait to feel Kiefer’s icy psionics lock your muscles, to see the white mask contingent pull a weapon on you, to know that running off at the mouth has finally, and appropriately, killed you.

But it doesn’t come. Rather, Miskin regards you with quiet curiosity. Then, her entourage parts, and you see her properly for the first time. She’s tall and sturdily built, though she walks with poise and grace. Her uniform is the same cut as that of those around her, color matching her blood caste but with a gold embroidered trim. Over one shoulder, she wears a cape made of rich, white fur. Her black hair hangs in complex braids, parting around long, smooth horns swept back as if by a strong current. It’s ostentatious, but she sells it, and you feel yourself buying it like a sucker.

“My employees told me a lot about you, Karkat, but they neglected to mention your… singular sense of humor,” she says. Those eyes stare right into the back of your pan. Had you seen nothing else tonight, her stare would make you believe her capable of the promises she’s made. You try to say something, but the words die in your mouth.

“I do not exaggerate when I tell you that you are the most important troll in my employ,” she says. “What you can do for me, I cannot put a price on. So it saddens me to see that you feel mistreated and coerced. When we arrive at my station, I can show you the truth of my intention to offer you comfort unlike anything you’ve seen on Alternia. But for now, is there anything I could give or promise that would help build your trust in my words?”

Her voice pours over you like hot honey. You know better than to trust sweetness like this.

“So you’d cull this asshole for me?” you ask, gesturing at Kiefer. The blueblood glares at you, outraged. But her expression changes to shock, then agony. Her head turns further, twisting her neck. Bones crack. Flesh tears. And soon, her body falls to the deck of the bridge, head rolling irregularly down the way, leaving a trail of blue. Her sunglasses lie smashed in the middle of the bridge.

“I have many employees who can do what Kiefer did. Does this satisfy you?”

You gasp and try not to vomit. She didn’t even hesitate. It just… happened. A pair of trolls rush over to collect Kiefer’s body as you stare, slack-jawed, at the head. Miskin walks up to it, kicks it over to you. You recoil in fright and disgust; Kiefer's blank eyes stare up at you, and you feel like you’re going to freeze. But you don’t, and it’s because you said she should die.

“Karkat?”

You want to look at Miskin, but you can't. She’s waiting for an answer. You have to say something.

"Yeah, it's… yeah. I believe you," you mumble, eyes still downward. Kiefer's jaw hangs slack. Her teeth are even and regular, less sharp even than your own.

"I am glad to hear it," Miskin says. "Shall we get underway before dawn?"

You say nothing. Fear melts into anger in your heart, and the shame swells again. All it took was ten minutes and a few tricks for this fucking asshole to grind sweeps of preparation to dust. What gave her the right? What gave her the gall to do that? 

Nothing anymore. But who's still standing? Who's leaving Alternia, and who's just more blood in the abattoir? Not the big scary blueblood, no! It's the scared little mutant! The freak! So who's swinging their bulge in the wind now? Who's playing a game they can't lose now, huh? Huh?

You're not sure when you started shouting the taunts in your head aloud. Hell, you're not even aware you're shouting at a severed head until you have to catch your breath. But you're not satisfied yet. You grab a fistful of Kiefer's dark hair and bring her face to yours. With everything you have, you scream two final words.

"FUCK YOU!"

With all your meager might, you hurl the head off the bridge, out into space unknown. As it disappears from view, tears run down your face. You don't have words for what you feel, but whatever it is cuts through a wall of numbness and fills you with light. You feel like bursting, so you let it out. You laugh. Hard and helpless and half-crazed, you laugh until it hurts. A hand rests on your shoulder, guiding you somewhere, but you don't care. This whatever-it-is that's escaping you dominates your attention. You feel like you're floating.

You are, in fact, floating, being carried along the bridge by fluid psionics in your hysteria. The procession passes through the opening of the ship, you with it. As you hear the door sliding shut, you afford one last glance at the planet you grew up on. It's sort of beautiful as the scorching rays of the sun creep over the horizon, casting the landscape in bright orange. It's never looked so colorful as it does now, when you're saying goodbye. And when the door clunks shut, you wish you'd had the chance to see more of it.

"Captain Botani, we are onboard. How long until takeoff?" Miskin says.

"Fifteen minutes minimum," a voice echoes through a speaker you can't find. 

"Thank you," Miskin says. "Alright, all hands to quarters. Mister Vantas, Akadji Kravij will guide you to your quarters."

"This way," says a troll in a yellow uniform, already halfway up a ladder. You clamber after him, through the surprisingly primitive structure of the ship. It's all bare metal and ladders, not a moving part in sight. Everything happens manually.

"Mister Vantas, do you have any known bad reactions to sopor slime? Even something minor?" Akadji asks.

"No," you say. "I climb in and fall asleep, and when I wake up, I'm sticky. The fuck else would happen?"

"You're unique," Akadji says, stepping off the ladder. "And Miss Natrop would not have put me in charge of this project if I didn't think of things like this. Ever been around concentrated sopor?"

He offers you a hand as you climb, but you reject it. The room you now stand in is full of tall recuperacoons, but they smell all wrong. It's too sharp for sopor, too intense.

"What the hell smells like unwashed 'cupe?" you ask.

"That, mister Vantas, is concentrated sopor," he says. Other masked trolls file into the room from above and below, each climbing into a recuperacoon. "The trip home takes about two wipes, so it's easier and cheaper to have everyone but the helmsman and captain asleep for the duration. Here, this one’s empty.”

He sits at the top of a ‘cupe, once more offering you a hand.

“What happens if I say no? If I want to back out of this deal? Will I be culled?” you ask. Akadji says nothing, not at first. In your periphery, a few masked trolls turn to look at you, but you don’t acknowledge them. The room bustles around you, otherwise unaware. 

“We have… contingencies,” he says, tone as blank as his mask. “I can tell you more once we’ve arrived. Now, please, get into your recuperacoon. We only have a little while before liftoff.”

“Get into your own ‘cupe, pissblood!” a cerulean troll hollers. “Maybe then you’ll shut the fuck up!”

It’s hard to tell how Akadji responds behind the mask, but he goes quiet and still for a moment.

"Thank you, mister Zantur," he mutters. Then, as if nothing happened, he turns back to you.

“Most of the craft isn’t designed to sustain trolls out of recuperacoons,” he says, impassive. “We have to take off soon. Please get in.”

‘Cupe or death, huh? You’re getting a lot of “do this or die” scenarios tonight. It’s a lot to ask of one troll, and frankly, it’s pretty exhausting. You might as well cull two featherbeasts at once. Tentatively, you dip a foot in, then the other. It’s pretty similar to normal sopor, you think. So you take a deep breath and let yourself slip into the warm slime. It hits hard, much harder than the normal stuff - no shit, troll investigative savant - and you’re falling down, deeper down.

Wait, shit, no, this isn’t going to work. You’re going to go into heat soon. Sopor can’t keep you under when it flares up; you’ve tried sleeping through it before. It’ll wake you up in the middle of a decompressed cabin and you’ll die. You’re going to die in heat in total darkness, and you can’t imagine a worse way to go. You try to scream, but the sopor has its hold on you, and you everything fades to black.

* * *

You wake up delirious and queasy. It’s pitch black. What’s going on? Where are… oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, your heat must have hit. You’re in the ‘cupe on the ship, and you’re in heat, and now you’re going to die. It’s over. Fear shoots through you, and you flail. You don’t want to die.

“Mister Vantas!” a voice shouts. “Mister Vantas, are you okay? Mister Vantas!”

“Who’s there?!” you holler.

“It’s Akadji,” he says. “What’s wrong, mister Vantas?”

“I can’t see you. Where are you?”

“Your eyes are closed, mister Vantas,” he says, unamused.

Oh. That would explain a few things. You force your eyes wide open, then snap them shut on reflex, stunned by bright light.

“Jegus fuck, are you trying to blind me?”

Akadji snorts a laugh before he can stop himself.

“You haven’t used your eyes in two wipes, mister Vantas,” he says, more composed. “It’s no surprise you’re a little sensitive. This is your first time in concentrated sopor, yes?”

You open your eyes as little as you can, getting them used to taking in light again. Your digestion sac is still doing backflips.

“Yeah,” you say. You’re more and more aware of all the ways your body feels wretched. If you can help it, this will be your last time in concentrated sopor, too. The nausea rises, and you clutch your abdomen, too busy trying not to barf to complain.

“Well, the next step for recuperation from a trip like this is to get some food in you. Do you like grubloaf, mister Vantas?” Akadji asks.

Seriously? Fucking grubloaf? What is this, a threshecutioner barracks? You would have thought a seadweller who was blowing all the smoke in the world up your waste chute about luxury and comfort could at least pretend to fulfill that for a meal or two before dumping the proverbial bucket of fermented genital discharge over your head and chaining you to the concupiscent platform to be ravaged. You try to convey this in a single grunt, but you’re not sure how successful you are.

Then, you smell something amazing. Your mouth waters. It’s rich and savory, like nothing you’ve ever smelled before. You force your eyes open to investigate.

You're on the softest couch you've ever touched, plush and deep purple. The room makes you think of a luxury overnight respiteblock, ornately decorated in violet and metallic gold. A portrait of Her Imperious Condescension hangs over a two-troll recuperacoon in the corner. Beside the couch stands Akadji and a rustblood butler with big, curved horns. The butler’s pushing a hovercart with a silvery dome atop. He lifts the dome, and you see four thick slices of grubloaf on a matching platter.

It’s not the stuff out of the box. It’s probably never even heard of the stuff out of the box. This grubloaf glistens with a glossy glaze. It’s a rich brown, studded with little green and red flecks - some kind of seasoning, you guess. And it’s all been smothered with gravy.

“Whoa,” you say, drooling shamelessly. Akadji puffs his chest out a little as the butler sets the platter on a little table. He leaves, and Akadji pulls out a chair for you.

"Come, eat! You'll feel right as reign with some food in your digestion sac, I promise," he says. Despite the spinning in your head, you recognize that this could all be a trap of some sort. The grubloaf could be drugged. But you sit down and slice off a little piece, sniffing it. It’s overwhelming, and although you don’t want to hold back, you force yourself to nibble.

Your eyes go wide. Flavors you’ve never experienced bloom in your mouth. You try to pin one down, but it keeps changing as you chew. Normal food doesn’t do that. It’s pure pleasure of a sort you can’t put words to. There’s no stopping you; you stuff your mouth and purr, grinding the tender meat down. 

“I wasn’t sure about the grubloaf, but I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” says Akadji. You grunt affirmatively, too busy eating to make words. From behind the mask, you feel him watching you. It’s awful, but you’re too hungry to say anything. And with every bite, the aches and pains evaporate. You can’t remember the last time your body felt this good.

“Did you put some kind of medicine in this like you’re trying to sneak pills to a lusus?” you ask. Akadji shakes his head.

“Two wipes in concentrated sopor does wonders for the health, once you get yourself fed,” he says. “If I’m right, you also slept through your heat, correct?”

You set your fork down and stare at Akadji, dumbfounded. That’s right. Your heat. The thing you were sure was going to kill you when it woke you up, which never happened. Much as you like to avoid acknowledging what’s between your legs, there’s no lingering feverishness, no itchy need. You’re fine.

“I guess so,” you say. “Would've been nicer than rubbing my nook bloody back on Alternia.”

Akadji laughs the laugh of a talk show host.

“It’s something of a luxury, yes. Trolls who are expected to have a bucket for the drones don’t have your luck, but we have plenty of concentrated sopor, should you wish to sleep through your heats in the future,” he says.

“Once your boss has her grub,” you supply through a mouthful of grubloaf. You don’t realize you’re saying it until it’s out there, and it makes you feel awful. Akadji says nothing. You chew your food and swallow in awkward silence. You never had the patience for an awkward silence.

“Okay, let’s acknowledge the big, smelly trunkbeast in the room before it takes a fifty-pound shit on my head and leaves me just as fucked as I was on Alternia,” you say. “You said you had contingencies. Tell me more.”

He adjusts his mask, thinking. That fills you with optimism, sort of, except the exact opposite of that thing. Drains you of hope? Pumps your guts full of even more pessimism than usual? Does this suck, or does it blow? Truly a question for the ages.

“I’m sorry, I’m only a little while out of the sopor myself,” he says. “Could you help me recall the context of when I said contingencies?”

"What happens if I don't want Miskin to fuck me?" you demand. "Are you going cull me? Force me to do it? What's your fucking contingency?"

Akadji says nothing. The questions hangs in the air. You picture it like a great blade hanging from a frayed rope, swinging back and forth over your heads. It promises blood, but whose remains in question.

Akadji grasps his mask and removes it from his face. You've never seen a troll with features so soft before; he's beautiful, with plush lips, big eyelashes, dimples, the lot. He looks like he's about to cry, but you suspect that's just how his eyes are.

"I don't know what Kiefer told you, but we're not going to cull you, no matter what," he says. "And as I did say, my team of scienterrorists have contingencies in place to accommodate you as much as possible."

"Yeah, sure, great, I'm sure you've built the fanciest glory hole in the empire. Or wait, fuck, maybe you'll drug me and let her hump my unconscious body like a barkbeast that found some particularly fresh roadkill. How courteous," you say.

Akadji seems taken aback.

"Kiefer gave you a very inaccurate picture of what we have you here for, it seems," he says, choosing his words carefully. "We're not taking you to some boudoir to let Miss Natrop have her way with you. This isn't pornography, mister Vantas. We need to run extensive tests to figure out whether you're always fertile or if it's only during your heat, to say nothing of whether or not it would be safe for you to incubate an egg inside of you. For all we know right now, it might be easiest to take some kind of biopsy from your gene bladder and do the rest in a test tube. And that's not even getting into Miss Natrop's negotiations with her quadrants. She's not going to discuss this with them until she has all the details of the plan, naturally."

You stare as Akadji rambles on about all the tests and ifs and whens, which make you feel more like an experiment squeakbeast by the moment.

"And of course once Miss Natrop has her healthy little grub, we'll discuss whether you'd prefer to find work under her or if we need to integrate you into one of several troll diaspora communities outside of imperial space," Akadji says.

Wow. This is the most un-Alternian thing you've ever heard. The masks should have been a dead giveaway; Miskin is completely shithive maggots, and this guy must be too. You've been hornswoggled by some kind of cult. All rules and expectations are out the window. 

"So what happens if all your scienterrorist bullshit says I can't give her a grub and all this was a waste?" you ask

Akadji goes wide-eyed.

"I… very much hope that is not the case," he mumbles, fingering the edge of his mask. There, at least, is the familiar Alternian thinking: be useful or get culled, complete with collective punishment on the side. Cold comfort, but comfort all the same; this ego cult isn't completely divorced from the empire.

"Well that's enough nonsense to asphyxiate a hoofbeast and more than I'm willing to put my pan at risk to remember," you say. "If I wait around, you're probably going to try to force it down like I'm a clogged load gaper begging to be plunged before I overflow and flood your entire ablution trap with liquid shit that you're going to have to clean with a toothbrush and a smile if you don't want to get drowned in sewage. So, whatever, fuck this, get on with whatever the hell you need to do first, and we'll talk when it's time for the bulges to come out."

Akadji perks up, relieved. He claps his hands together and starts babbling about some kind of scan, but you grab his face and physically stop him from talking. Fucking hell, can this guy run on at the mouth.

"Fine. Shorter words, since your thinkpan isn't rigged to fucking listen. Go forward. What do I do now?" You speak slowly, to make sure he can't pretend you aren't talking down at him. It's hard to make sure you're coming off as a big enough asshole when everyone is masked, so you’d rather make the most of this opportunity.

"You change into your robe, and we get started," he says, settling his mask on his face before the forced smile can collapse. Point to Karkat Vantas; you grin internally. But when he throws you the robe, he ties the score up. It’s a medikilling robe; you’ll be entirely naked from behind. Sure, you won’t have to see the “cull-me” red of your grub scars, but other trolls will. They’re gonna know you’re a freak. They’ll know you’re a mutant. And they will try to kill you.

“Mister Vantas?” Akadji asks. You shake your head and stare at him, your expression haunted. You’re peripherally aware how tight your hands grasp the robe and how much faster your pump biscuit is hammering away - full fight-or-flight.

“Fuck off,” you sputter, swooping into the ablution trap. You lock the door and lean against it, despite the fact that leaning against a door that slides won’t keep anyone out. It’s the spirit of the thing that calms you, the spirit of making goddamn sure he doesn’t see your candy red. You know he knows what color your blood is. It doesn’t matter. But you can’t let it go. So you pinch your eyes as tight as you can and start peeling the layers off of yourself. 

Sweater first, then the sweatpants. Next comes the undershirt, then the pants that go all the way up past your grubscars. After that, you peel off the ever-sweaty tank top, pinching your eyes extra-tight. Air on your chest sends shivers up your spine. But you continue, peeling your tights down your abdomen and legs before kicking them off. Finally, you cast aside your boxer shorts and come to your briefs. You bite your lip and slide them off, careful to keep your hands as far from your sensitive genitals as you can. Maybe if you'd ever jerked your bulge off or played with your nook when you weren't in heat and desperate, it would take more for you to pop a wiggly. But your body is foreign and forbidden territory, even to you.

Eyes pinched shut, you grope for the coarse fabric of the robe. You fumble the drawstrings as you tie them behind your neck and around your waist. But you’re still bare. Nearly half of you is vulnerable. You won’t see, but someone else might. They’ll see the red and they’ll know, and then they’ll cull you right there and…

You take a deep breath, then another. You’re fine. You’re going to be fine. They can’t see your grubscars. Everything is as peachy as a fucking peach ring. It’s all covered, and you’re going to goddamn well prove it to yourself.

“You’re fine, you neurotic parfait of self-absorption and decaying grub excrement,” you say under your breath. “Open your eyes and get out of the fucking ablution trap before you drop dead of old age.”

Taking one last breath, you brace yourself. You ease one eyelid open and… you’re a shapeless green rectangle. All you see of yourself is gray skin, black hair, and your familiar face. Nothing to be alarmed about.

“Told you so, dumb-dumb.” You curse at your own damage, but in truth, you’re relieved. Breathing comes easier now, and the cement your knees had decided to turn into becomes jelly. With a sigh, you slump against the door. Everything has to be a federal fucking issue with you some nights. It’s exhausting.

On the other side of the door, you hear a palmhusk going apeshit. It’s not that you make the conscious decision to eavesdrop, but your body works ahead of your thinkpan on the whole survival tactics thing sometimes, and right now, you want information.

“Akadji here,” he says. “This had better be an… no, look, I’m about to bring mister Vantas down to the exam room to start scanning. I haven’t got time to start another… Well pull it out of commission and have a technician look at it, I’m sure he’ll be…”

His voice grows more irritated as he speaks, but whatever was said last has him dead silent. You can’t hear anything else on the phone, but it’s a long moment before he says anything again. When he speaks, he’s impassive, without any intonation in his voice, just like on the ship.

“I’m very sorry to hear that. Mister Zantur will be sorely missed for his contributions to Miss Natrop's work,” Akadji says. The name sounds familiar… that cerulean from the ship?

“Look, as I’ve told you, I’m on the legacy project. I’m sure your maintenance team can find a leak in one recuperacoon without my oversight,” he says. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I am handling very delicate steps in something miss Natrop has deemed to be of the utmost importance. Do not interrupt me unless there’s an emergency, otherwise I will be filing a formal complaint, understood? Very good.”

The palmhusk clicks, and Akadji sighs. 

“Oh, Zantur, ” he says, chuckling under his breath. It’s a cruel little noise; your blood turns icy. 

“You really were a loudmouth.”


	3. And If The Dam Breaks Open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is where the sex happens

You never saw the ocean. Well, you saw it in movies, but that doesn't count. You don't know what it smells like, tastes like, feels like… you've never even had sand under your feet. It strikes you that here, inside this big metal tube, might be the closest you'll get. It sounds like what you imagine the ocean would, a distant, indistinct roar that ebbs and flows as the scanner moves up and down your body. You can't remember having felt so peaceful; you want to cry.

Too soon, you hear three loud beeps, and the machine shuts down. Someone guides the gurney you're on out into the piercing white of the medikiller bay. You pinch your eyes shut and swear under your breath.

"Good news, Mr. Vantas!” Akadji announces.

“What, has that mask finally fused to your face and rendered you a mandatory cull under imperial decree?” you ask, slowly opening your eyelids.

“Very funny,” he says. “No, your anatomy matches what little information we’ve been able to find from early Alternian sources. In theory, you are fertile!”

“Fucking jubilant news, as long as by ‘in theory’ you actually fucking mean ‘it’s time to get this asinine affair on the buggyway and leave the mutant in fucking peace,’” you say. You roll your eyes. “In theory” never fucking means yes; you’ve seen enough movies to know that.

“Well not quite, but we’re close. Your primitive reproductive system may be fully formed, but we need to confirm that everything moves the way it’s supposed to, and even then, we have to see if you’re compatible with more evolved genetic material…” he drones. Fuck, it’s like he’s an even bigger asshole than you.

“Do your fucking test, then,” you say. “You’re jerking off like it’s drone season, for fuck’s sake, and if you want to pound my nook so bad, you could do us both the courtesy of asking me outright, you rambling sack of barely coherent shit.”

He drops his arms to his sides, going impassive.

“Fine, Vantas,” he says. “Have it your way. We’ll induce heat now.”

Wait, fuck, what? You shoot up as his words rip all will to sass from you.

“Get the fuck back here and repeat what you just said!” you shout. But a door shuts, and he can’t hear you. Your pump biscuit goes wild, and you panic-scan for a way out.

“Settle down, Vantas,” booms Akadji’s voice from an unseen speaker. If you doubted you were getting under his skin before, your doubts are now gone. “As I was trying to explain, we will need to chemically induce heat in order to confirm that your seedflap will open and accept material into your gene bladder. It won’t last as long, but it will be intense. Do you want to do that, or should we just wait half a sweep for you to go into heat naturally?”

Any color in your face drains away. You should have figured your heat would come up. Frankly, you feel like an idiot for not pegging that already. Oh, if you had past Karkat’s neck in you hands, you’d choke some sense into him. But you don’t have that luxury. You have heat, or you have anticipation followed by heat. And as bad as that second one sounds, you still feel the urge to play the gigantic weenie and delay what’s coming.

“FINE!” you swear as loud as you can. “FUCKING PUMP ME FULL OF CHEMICALS! TELL YOUR FISH BITCH SHE CAN WATCH ME JERK OFF IF SHE GODDAMN WANTS! BRING ALONG THE WEIRD FETISH PORN AND LET’S ALL HAVE A PARTY WHILE KARKAT ABUSES HIMSELF IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EXAM ROOM! HOW MANY TIMES WILL HE TRY TO CLAW OFF HIS BULGE BEFORE HE’S FORCED TO SEE IT AGAIN? WHO KNOWS! OR BETTER YET, WHY DON’T YOU COME DOWN HERE YOURSELF AND EAT MY MOTHERFUCKING NOOK!”

It’s been a while since you last screamed yourself hoarse like that. In your defeat, you fell out of practice. As you look around the room, it seems you at least can still throw such a tantrum that every troll in the room has to watch it go down like a railbuggy wreck.

“Scienterrorists, report to heat protocol stations, on the double,” Akadji says. He’s composed over the loudspeaker, impassive.

Around you, trolls tap their masks, and big, baggy hazardous materials suits emerge and engulf them. One approaches you with some kind of insect hanging from a rack. While you stare, another cuffs your hand to the rail. You turn to object, but then your other arm gets cuffed down.

“What the fuck?” you demand. A scienterrorist reaches between the bug’s rear legs and pulls down some kind of tube. At the end glints a sharp stinger.

“We don’t know how your heat pheromones affect modern troll anatomy,” Akadji says. “It’s difficult to take observations when your team is in a pailing frenzy.”

You try to pull away, but it’s useless. A masked scienterrorist wraps something tight around your upper arm, and another prods at the bend of your elbow, finding a vein. Clear venom beads at the tip of the stinger, and they slide it into your arm. It burns like hell, and you scream, but they’re holding you down now. Something fiery-hot pumps out from the wound, burn spreading from fingertips to shoulders. It crawls out from there to your pump biscuit, like a glowing metal needle in your core. Then it rages out from your thorax, rushing to each of your extremities, scorching like the sun. You pinch your eyes as the light turns piercing-bright. Heat pools between your legs, and need rises in you. It’s heat, but it’s never been this strong before. You rub your knees together as your bulge slips free, red fluids already beading along the cleft of your nook.

“Pupil dilation optimal. Skin temperature elevated. Looks like he’s where he needs to be,” says one scienterrorist.

“Good,” booms Akadji’s voice. “Pull the drip and get him into the scanner. Any response from team members?”

Your arm throbs as someone pulls the stinger free. But your groin demands all your attention, screaming with need. You pinch your eyes shut and breathe slowly, deeply, like you have so many times before. It’s not doing much, but you grit your teeth and try to bear through it.

“All statuses good down here, sir,” says a scienterrorist. They reach around your neck. You groan and lean into their touch as they untie your medikill robe. You whimper as they take their hand back. It’s not satisfying, but it's something, that little, incidental touch, and you crave more. 

What rational part of you remains acknowledges that you've never been touched while you're in heat before.

"Alright, remove the robe and get the sensors on," Akadji says. Wait, remove the…? Oh no.

"No! No no no no no," you scream. "No! Not that! Don't make me look! Don't make me fucking look!"

Panic can't cut through the heat, but it tries. You writhe and snap your teeth and kick at anyone who gets close. But there are many of them, and all it takes is a little touch to distract you. Two hands, one on either side of your head, overwhelm your senses with chemical pleasure. Your muscles go slack, and you can’t muster the effort to fight back. Trapped in your useless, freak body, you pinch your eyes shut and choke back the rising bile. Once more, your own body betrays you. It’s sickening. You wish you’d had the will to die on Alternia.

“Please, fucking… knock me out! Something! Anything! Don’t make me look!”

The scienterrorists pull the robe off of you, and even though you’ve pinched your eyes shut, you can’t turn the picture of your disgusting grubscars and bulge off in your head. Flesh-crawling revulsion and burning need pull you in opposite directions.

“We need you alert, Vantas,” says Akadji. “If you have a bad reaction to the heat venom, you might suffer thinkpan damage. You don’t want that, do you?”

“Then cover my fucking eyes!” You writhe as the world spins around you. It's pulling you apart, this heat, and you can't focus long enough to breathe through it. Someone sets their fingers on your eyelids and peels them apart.

"We need those open, Vantas. Pupil contraction is our only warning symptom before irreversible damage," says Akadji. You scream and writhe, staring up, but that writhing red monstrosity between your legs, that horrible thing, flicks into your peripheral vision. You sob and wail, and your digestion sac clenches. All these trolls are staring at the most disgusting parts of your body. You're hideous, you’re revolting, you deserve to die. You're a mutant, and every part of you should be scoured from the world.

As you hyperventilate, the thoughts come faster and faster. Mutant. Freak. Worthless. Monster. Scum. Trash. Garbage. Hideous. Die. Die. Die. But then, something else. It’s the ocean, roaring in the distance. The waves come in, crash, recede. White noise roars all around you. The scanner - you’re back inside. Your breathing lines up as the noise waxes and wanes. You stare at the flat metal interior, and you feel your pump biscuit calming in your chest. Tears soak your face and swollen eyes, but something just… isn’t pulling like it did.

You’re focused on breathing. It’s no different than any other heat, and though it burns, you’ll survive. Your body twitches, but you’re centering your mind. Letting everything go to static noise. Watching your sensations wash over you, rather than struggling. You don’t have to look down, see your parts. Focus on breathing. Let the scienterrorists do the rest.

The heat doesn’t burn as sharply now. It’s less like a welding torch in your shame globes and more like lava, flowing, patient and inevitable. You try not to let the image of red liquid within your loins pull you away from the static calm. Let the waves wash over you, pull you out to sea.

But these waves aren’t water. They’re hot lava, bubbling forth from your own loins. This warm, welcoming sensation that beckons you forth isn’t taking you out of your body. It’s pulling you deeper in, deeper down, toward your own molten core. It’s helping you slough off the burdens of sapience for a more primitive way of thinking. Helping you feel your need - what does it matter, the color of these parts, if all they need is to be filled?

You lick your lips and groan. It’s throaty and lusty, a plea for something to quench you. Oh, if only you could feel something long and thick inside of you. A memory swims to the surface, the only memory you have of such sensations. It’s not bitter now. It’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever experienced, a candied moment of bliss.

“Sol…” you moan, and you wish someone or something would hurry up and tend to this need between your legs and…

Three loud, sharp beeps kill your reverie as dead as your friend. The ocean evaporates, and you’re just a horny mutant in a tube. Horny, this time - not fighting your heat, but running with it, farther than you would ever have risked before. Though you are once again coherent enough to look away from your body, you feel your hips thrusting at the air, presenting your parts, a cloud of inviting pheromones and a red carpet to the VIT section.

Your pheromones aren’t the only ones in the room, though. Something smells amazing - everything,  _ everything _ , smells amazing. You're drooling, but not from your mouth.

Wait, is this the first time you've been around other trolls during your heat? Shit. You didn't think of that. It's bad enough on your own, but the smell of other trolls, even residual, intoxicates you. It coats your sinuses and clings, jellied kerosene to your burning heat. All resistance washes away, and if you weren’t tied down, you’d already be masturbating. You can’t pinpoint which walking trash bag is saying what, but you whimper and groan, thrusting your needy crotch.

“Pupil status?”

“Still dilated, ma’am. No cause for alarm.”

“Excellent. His seedflap appears to be fully functional, too. Who wants to share the good news with Akadji?”

These words should mean something to you, but they don’t right now.

“Please…” you mewl, rocking the gurney as you hump the air. “Please, fuck me!”

The troll by your head flinches.

“Uh, ma’am, what’s, uh, protocol for this?” they ask. You heave your whole body towards the troll.

“Easy, Remapp,” she says. “Stay in your lane.”

You make that hard for this troll; one mighty heave moves the entire gurney, hitting Remapp right in the hip. They stumble backwards, catching themself on a medical tray.

“Ow, fuck! I think I… ughhhhh.” Whatever they were saying melts into a groan. Something thick and musky hits your senses, and the heat in your belly flares. What you were smelling before was residual; this is troll pheromone right from the source. A commotion erupts behind your head. But you can’t see. You don’t care to see.

“Fuck… fucking… fuck me… please fuck me,” you manage, panting. It’s too hot, your core. Everything hurts, and your need for relief consumes you. Your eyes are useless; the world swims in front of you.

The commotion circles you, and not by sight but by smell, you turn to it. There’s a troll, an oliveblood, halfway torn free of their protective suit, pants around their ankles. Three other trolls hold them back, but their tentabulge points straight at you. Never in your life have you seen a bulge pointing so intently. And you’ve never wanted anything more.

“Give me that fucking bulge,” you groan, spreading your legs wide and thrusting at them. If you don’t get fucked right now, you feel like you’re really going to die. A green haze clouds your vision.

“Vantas!” Akadji’s voice booms from the speakers. “Do you consent to proceeding with testing?”

“Fuck me!” you shout, slurring your words. “Please, fuck me!”

“That’s the plan. Do you agree to let these trolls inseminate you?”

"YES!"

You sob the word as you thrust your hips at the olive troll. 

"Have at him!" Akadji's voice booms over the speakers. The trolls still in their suits look around, confused, but it’s all the lapse the olive needs. They break free and barrel towards you, all but leaping onto the gurney. This must be Remapp, you realize, with what little processing power your heat hasn’t overridden. 

Somewhere within you, a levee bursts and floods. You sob as the waters wash away sweeps of arrogant construction built in its shadow, things you thought would stand until there was no more you left to need them. It’s all debris now, rushing downstream toward an endless expanse. When the deluge ends, you’ll be digging through a lifetime of damage. But for now, you feel clean, pure, right in a way you never thought you could.

“Oh, fuck!” swears the big olive. They’re hip to hip with you, showing your body sensations you should have known a long time ago. It’s a lot to take for a near-virgin nook. You’re full, stretched wide. Oversensitive, your shame globes swell at long-needed touch, plump and soft with your heat. You want to say something, anything, about the sensations this olive’s bulge is making you feel. But when you open your mouth, all you can do is chirp and whine.

It’s a truer expression of how you feel than words could do justice.

“So fucking warm,” the olive groans. They lay atop you as they thrust, pinning your bulge between your stomach and their cooler skin. You feel yourself wriggling, smearing gene fluid and taking what sensations you can. With all you have, you thrust back, meeting their hips and reveling in fiery, desperate pleasure. It fills your nook, your globes, your gene bladder, then spills over into the rest of you, pouring out from your core, filling your bulge and pooling in your throat. You can see it glowing. It’s so much - too much. You can’t hold it. You have to release, have to let go, have to burst…

And there, at the peak, you wish with all you have that it was Sollux between your thighs.

“FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKK!”

You scream the word, the loudest thing you’ve ever screamed in your life, as you come. That tension bursts out of you at both ends. Your muscles spasm and twitch as your bulge drenches your stomach and chest. It’s so warm, so wet, but that thick, delicious thing keeps pounding away. You look down and…

Red. Candy red. It’s all over you, all over everywhere. You scream, try to scramble away from it. No good. Cuffs. Red. Fuck. Try to break free. Shriek again. Still red. Your red. Freak red. You want to puke.

“Let me go let me go lemmegolemmegolemmego!”

You’re babbling, incoherent. Horror overrides. Freak red. Red is death. Red is…

“Thooth.”

A hand cups your chin and tilts it away. You stare up at another mask. Still red below. Still…

A gloved hand caresses your cheek. It’s tender, conciliatory. Somewhere in your head, you know it’s perverted, a stranger papping you while you’re pailing. But you love it, so much.

"Thooth," they lisp. "Eyeth up here."

It's a familiar lisp, but the pounding of the bulge in your nook makes it hard to think. You whine, still needy. Loud grunts precede frantic thrusting, and the olive hilts in you, coming with a groan.

"Oh fuck…" you whimper, straining to look at the strange, cooling wave that fills you. It goes deep, deeper than you had any idea you went, into some secret part of you. It washes up over the fire in your core and stays there, a knot of chill in the middle of your inferno.

"Look at me," the troll says. "Jutht keep looking at me."

"Sollux…" you groan. It’s his voice. How could you ever miss it? The olive crawls off of you, and you try to caress the masked troll, tugging at your restraints. You know it's not real. It can't be. But you let that voice take you back. You remember how tenderly he touched you, how patient he was. How he kissed you and told you to keep looking at him, so you wouldn't look at yourself.

"Thh… It'th okay," he says. "Jutht keep looking at me and it'll be over thoon."

You're hallucinating the only troll you could have been in a quadrant with, the only troll who would put you in a quadrant knowing your blood color, as a coping mechanism. It's pathetic, but as another bulge slides into your nook, you simply don't have the bandwidth to care. It’s cool and narrow, this new bulge penetrating you. You don’t see what color this troll is; this troll with Sollux's voice won't let you look. But your nook is full, and it feels so right.

"Fuck yeah, take my bulge, bitch!" the strange troll shouts. She's ramming you hard, and it hurts, but the words melt in your mouth, and you gurgle pleasure. She's using you; you're an object to her. Hell, you've heard better sex talk on bucket flicks. But all you want is more.

"Fuck me," you say. "Fuck me good, oh, gog, fill my fucking nook up!"

She squeals as she comes, another load of cold in your too-hot nook. This time, you're aware of something inside of you moving. It pulls the genetic material deeper into you, sucking it up where your body clutches the olive troll's issue. 

Your body is being bred; it didn't hit you before, but it does now. This slurry in your gene bladder is going to become a living, breathing grub. You are making a grub, here, now. When she pulls out, your nook aches as it has ached through every heat you’ve suffered through, demanding something thick be stuffed into it. But here, now, you understand why your body has tortured you like this.

“I’m making a grub,” you say, voice thin and reverant. “Fucking… making a grub inside me.”

“Yeah, that’th right,” the masked troll says in Sollux’s voice. “You’re going to make a grub inthide of you.”

The masked troll wipes something away from your eyes - tears? When did you start crying? You’re not sure, but you know you start again when a pair of bulges corkscrew their way into your nook, thick and warm. It’s so nice, feeling like this. You don’t even try to look down this time. You just nuzzle your face into the gloved hand on your cheek.

This new troll doesn’t thrust so much as they gyrate against your nook, letting their bulges curl and uncurl around each other. You moan, long and loud, as the bulges twist against your too-tender shame globes. As full as your gene bladder feels, all you can think of is pouring more into it. This troll has more - you need more.

“Please,” you beg. “Please, give… bucket. Make me bucket.”

Your brain’s foggy. It’s hard to put words together. You keep it simple. Thick bulges fill you. Fuck hard. Twist, pump, writhe. Hump back. Hump deep. Let the seedflap suck slurry. Pull it deep. Feel warm, full. Good Karkat. Good boy.

Hand on your face. Thumb rubs the jawline. Tender, intimate. So unlike the thrusting. So unlike what’s between your legs. So unlike anything you’ve felt since you were with…

“Sollux,” you groan. It feels right. The name that belongs. Feels right in your mouth. Right in your pump biscuit.

“Kk,” the masked troll says in his voice. Sad and soft. Just like when he was really with you. But the bulge is all wrong. It’s thick, singular, hotter than you. Wait, new bulge? Different troll? Not sure when that happened. But you feel the stretch. Full gene bladder. Still need more, too hot.

“How many,” you manage. It’s hard - so many sounds. Groans, chirps, deeper noises. Heavy traffic. But the words make it through.

“Theven, now,” says the dream of Sollux.

"Wow." Words come from far off. Distant voice. Is it really yours? Can't say. Not really in your body. Distant, dreamy. But a good dream. Your first good dream.

It's all distant now - dream-Sollux, too. The pleasure. The noises, yours and others.

The dream calls you deeper, yawning to embrace you, and all your tired, overfucked brain can do is sink into its embrace. You manage one word, one real word, as the darkness envelops you, one last thing before you know the world no longer.

"Sollux."


	4. Wish You Were Here

You expected nothing less than pettiness from Akadji, but to see him risk his entire career for spite? You're glad you learned a thing or two about contingencies from TZ and spiderbitch before they met their forgone conclusion. 

You were ready when Akadji gave his scienterrorists the all-clear to take off their containment suits and succumb to Karkat's pheromones, when he conveniently forgot to assign someone to watch Karkat's eyes for that telltale contraction. Really, it was for the best. Nobody else knows how Karkat’s thinkpan goes haywire when he sees his own color, not the magnitude of his reaction. Watching Karkat get fucked by strange trolls was always going to hurt, but you knew that in advance. You were ready to keep his attention on you, away from his crotch as fear-moans and whore-moans made their presence unmistakable.

That was the part you had braced yourself against; this is the other part. He said your name. He looked right at you, and he said your name. Fuck, he’s calling out to you. He wants you here, with him, in a way you can’t be. It slips beneath your skin and skewers your pump biscuit. You haven’t hurt like this since he locked himself in his ablution trap and told you to fuck off and never come back.

“Sollux,” he says, and you weep behind your mask, trying to staunch the flow of tears from your mismatched eyes. You pinch them tight, shutting out the need in his expression. He groans your name again, and again, and again, until you can’t stand it. You’re ready to tear off your mask and join the frenzy at his other end, until…

Until you open your eyes again.

Pinholes. Pupils like pinholes, and you’re not sure how long they’ve been like that.

“Fuck!” you scream. “He’th contracted! Clear the exam room!”

You grasp for the injector at your belt and jam it into his neck, pressing the switch. It snaps, and as you pull it away, four beads of black antivenin form on Karkat’s neck.

“You are not the head scientist here, mister Captor,” says Akadji over the loudspeakers. “Continue the experiment.”

“He’th gonna fucking die! You wanna explain that to Mithkin? That the’th not getting her grub because you jumped your own thafety protocolth?”

Screaming hasn’t been easy since you got your helmsman implants, but you do a respectable job of it, just like you do with all the other things you aren’t supposed to be able to anymore.

“Terminate experiment immediately,” says Akadji over the loudspeakers. “Activate emergency filtration systems. Security, quarantine everyone exposed to the subject’s pheromones. That is all.”

The doors slide open, and a dozen indigos enter in suits designed for zero-atmosphere combat, electrical incentive batons in hand. The air crackles as they struggle with the naked scienterrorists. It’s background noise; you shatter Karkat’s restraints with your psionics and pull him off of the gurney, into your lap. Fans roar, sucking the pheromone-laced air out of the room, one more part of the cacophony. You cradle Karkat’s incoherent form to your chest, watching his eyes.

“C’mon, KK,” you whisper. “C’mon. Come back to me. Come back. You can do thith. C’mon.”

You beat back the rising guilt, the knowledge that it’s your fault he’s here. Stay focused. You can’t help him if your stupid fucking pan decides to spiral. Be present. Focus on Karkat.

“Come back to me, KK,” you say. “I know you’re in there.”

His eyelids flicker, but you hold one open with your gloved fingertips. The iris slackens, dilates, little by little. It’s a good sign. The antivenin is doing its job, reversing the reaction. He’s going back to normal.

Two beeps sound in the background - the roar of the fans spins down, and the air is clear. You tear off your mask and suit, and you hold Karkat to your chest, crying at his vacant smile and limp form.

He wouldn’t recognize you like this, with your head shaved and thick metal plugs sticking out of your neck. You were always scrawny, but now you're downright gaunt, every detail hard and uncompromising from half a sweep of hustle and hunger like you never knew planetside. Your face bears a million miniscule scars from all the times you’ve pushed your powers too hard and been burned.

"What in the hell is going on!"

The shout echoes through the exam room as the doors slide shut. Miskin stands tall and furious, mask absent. She bears her needle-like teeth at you, fins flaring wide as they go.

"We made progreth tethting the thubject'th retheptiveneth to the induced heat," you say, tone flat. "He'th been intheminated thucthethfully. The venom needth to wear off before we can monitor hith body two confirm it took."

Involuntary, you clutch Karkat closer to you.

"That is not what I am talking about. Why did my security detail have to drag half of my medical staff into a quarantine cell, where they are now fucking like the drones have given them triple reproductive duties!"

You snort.

"Athk your chief thientitht," you say.

"I do not appreciate your tone, Captor," she says. "Were you not blackmailing me, I would teach you some respect for our gap on the hemospectrum."

You roll your eyes. Her stupid pitch insinuations never end. Still, it's easier this way. She's too hot for you to hunt down the beeowulf clusters containing evidence of her extracurricular activities. And she doesn't need to know about the fatality switch that buzzes between the lobes of your pump biscuit.

“He could have died,” you say, low and snarling.

She sneers at you, and it makes your blood boil.

“But have you ever seen him so happy as he is now? Look at how he smiles,” she says. “I doubt he has ever enjoyed better prospects for his future than he does now. He probably enjoys being a bucket.”

"Fuck yourthelf, fithbitch," you snap. "You're getting your grub."

She cackles like a villain from that Eastern Alternian cartoon you used to watch with Aradia. Does she know how ridiculous she is?

"Fishbitch? My word. Your little matesprit really does take the teeth out of your words, Captor," she says. Low blow; you try not to wince. “Maybe I should cull him once I have what I need. You keep me sharp. I would be foolish to let that slip away from me.”

“I am not your fucking kithmethith,” you snarl through clenched teeth. She puts her hands up, feigning contrition, grinning wickedly.

“Of course,” she says. “I will leave you to play lusus for your precious mutant. And, of course, the next I hear of my grub will not be from my chief of security, I trust?”

You say nothing. The sweeps have taught you how to keep your mouth shut. She turns to leave, taking your silence as deference - pick your battles, Sollux, you’ve got what you want. But as she stands in the door, she turns back to you.

“You know, you really would make a marvelous kismesis. It hurts my pump biscuit to see you waste such potential on that breeder freak.”

She lingers just long enough to see you shudder as you choke back the urge to lash out. When she leaves, you sigh and clutch Karkat yet tighter. Against your will, you look at him. Vacant as he is, this is the most he’s ever smiled. It’s the lingering effects of having his heat satisfied. You know it. But Miskin’s words dig into you as sure as if she’d buried her teeth in your throat. 

Still, it’s far from the worst you’ve suffered for Karkat’s sake. You rise to your legs, wrapping Karkat’s arms around you with your psionics. They don’t crackle anymore when you use them. Instead, energies flow as smooth as water at your whim. The sheer power of your psionics lets you do a lot of things a helmsman isn’t supposed to, things like standing and walking.

You could just float yourself and Karkat to his room, but you like pretending your legs still work. It makes you feel more like a troll than a living engine component. And it’s something to focus on that isn’t the troll in your arms. There’s no point in wondering how long it will take for all the chemicals in his body to wear off. You’ll know when there’s knowing to be done. But after three sweeps of scheming, the hardest part is waiting to find out whether you’ve saved Karkat’s life or just stalled his culling.

As you come to the door of his quarters, you’re vaguely aware that Karkat’s thighs have dripped a rainbow trail of slurry to his door. He’s a mess, covered in nine trolls’ slurry from grubscars to ankles. And to your blushing realization, his bulge is still hanging out of its sheath, limp between his legs. You carry him inside and lock the door behind you both.

“Hmm?”

He moves in your arms, eyes fluttering open.

“KK?”

“Oh hi,” he says, distant and a little dopey through a lopsided grin. “You wanna fuck me?”

A lump forms in your throat.

“KK, it’th Thollux,” you say. “Are you okay?”

He lolls his head like a drunk. You don’t want to watch.

“‘m horny,” he says. “Wanna fuck?”

His bulge has come to, dancing and curling in the air. He reaches down and lets it coil between his fingers, gasping at his own touch. You try to move his gaze away before the red makes him panic, but he doesn’t seem to care. 

“You need thleep, KK,” you say. “Let’th clean all thith off of you and get you into your ‘cupe.”

He giggles and purrs, ignoring you for his bulge, reaching his other hand down to paw at his nook. That carefree smile on his face looks so indecent while he masturbates. It does things to parts deep inside of you that you don’t want to acknowledge. Dampness pools at your loins, and your bulges swell within your sheath. You’re overcome with shame at your lust and, even more, the prickles of temptation.

“I can make grubs here,” he slurs, rubbing his worn-out nook. “Wanna make a grub in me? Be a cute grub with pretty eyes. You got pretty eyes.”

You set him down in his ablution trap, his words twisting like knives in your guts. The worst part is the voice in your head that wants to give in, to take him like this when he’s so willing and eager. To accept this simulacrum of what you hope he feels for you as real enough. To revel in it, uniting with him without a care for anything else in the goddamn universe.

But you fight that voice, drown it in every tear you’ve cried for your friend and beat it dead with your anger at the empire that made Karkat hate himself. You’d scratch a hole in the universe itself to see him happy. Nothing but the real Karkat, the full Karkat, is enough.

“C’mon, KK, you’re a meth,” you say. You soap up a cleaning rag. “Let me take care of you.”

You bring the rag to his chest, and he whines. His body spasms, and he jams his hand against his nook.

“Teasing’s mean,” he whines. He’s pitiful, and it makes you sick. But he doesn’t really care. He seems content to lay there and masturbate. You try to ignore it as best as you can, though the wriggling of your bulges down the leg of your uniform makes that challenging. 

You’re as gentle as you’ve ever been, wiping him clean and squeezing the slurry out of the rag. He’s purring, content. It’s so goddamn domestic you’d have called it cheesy if it were in one of his flicks. You twist the rag, rinse, keep wiping him down. When you come to the base of his stomach, you move down to his legs. It’s not easier; if anything, it’s more intimate, and you clench your teeth.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. He sounds vulnerable and innocent. Innocent! Shouty McNubs himself sounds innocent! The universe has gone shithive maggots, and you choke back a sob.

“It’th nothing,” you say. “Jutht thinking about thomeone.”

You wipe the inside of his thigh, and the chill that shoots up your posture pole nauseates you. But you don’t stop. You're just cleaning him.

“Kay,” he says. “Feels like you wanna fuck. You’re rubbing my legs all sexy.”

You bite your lip.

“I’m wiping you off, that’th it,” you say.

He pouts. Fucking pouts. You wish you could give him what he’s asking for.

“But I wanna fuck. You’re real gentle ‘n it feels nice,” he says. He grabs your wrist and guides the cloth up his thigh, up to the last part of him you need to clean. "Nobody's been gentle to me in a long time."

“You gotta thleep,” you say. Your voice wobbles. He moans, grinding against you. All that’s between your fingers and his nook is a slurry-soaked rag.

“You’re already there,” he says. “Just lemme do it, and I’ll make you feel real good.”

No. You can’t. You have to stop this, pull away.

“Later,” you say. “But you have to take a nap firtht.”

He hasn’t stopped. You try to pull your hand away; you feel like an insect, and you wish a boot would fall from the sky and crush you before you have to endure another second of this.

“Why not now?”

“Becauthe… becauthe I’m gonna fuck the thenthe out of your thinkpan,” you say. It’s all you can think of. You’re going to cry, and you can’t stop it. “I’m gonna pump your nook tho full of bulge-muthtard that you look like you have two grubth inthide of you. You won’t be able to walk for a wipe. Tho you, uh, you need to get thome thleep tho you can keep up.”

Every syllable comes out bitter and rotten, and you sob your way through the last few words. Karkat lets your hand go, and you snatch it away, wrapping your arms around yourself.

“‘m sorry,” he says. “Thought you were playing a game. We don’t gotta fuck if you don’t wanna.”

He’s fucking concerned for you. He’s concerned for You. Here, now, when he’s drugged up out of his senses, he’s concerned for you. After all this, after what you’ve put him through, directly or indirectly, he’s worried about you. He crawls out of the ablution trap on shaky limbs and pulls you into a clumsy hug.

“C’mere, Sollux,” he mumbles, cheek to cheek with you. You’re helpless to do anything but cry in his arms. “You’re gonna be okay.”

You hold him tight to you, and you let it all go. Three sweeps of lying, cheating, stealing, hacking, surgery, blackmail, anger, sadness, longing, pity, all of it, everything, pours out of you. You’ve tried to be strong for far too long, and now it’s your turn to crumble in the arms of the troll for whom you’d give anything.

He plants his lips on your cheek, soft and sweet. You lean back, look him in the eyes as best you can. With a thumb, he wipes your tears away, and he smiles.

“I missed you."


End file.
